With the advent of cellular phones and pagers, an individual person may have multiple telephone numbers associated with them. Telephone routing systems exist to automatically route calls intended for a called party to multiple phone numbers in an attempt to reach the called party. For example, a routing system can automatically route telephone calls for a called party to the called party's business phone, then home phone, then cellular phone, then pager device.
Sometimes a called party cannot respond to a telephone call to any of the phone numbers associated with the called party. In this case, known telephone answering systems can record a voice message from the calling party. This message can be later retrieved by the called party. However, the calling party has no way to determine when or if the called party has retrieved the message. Further, the calling party may desire that the called party be able to immediately retrieve the message.
Based on the foregoing, there is a need for a system and method that allows a calling party to leave a voice message for a called party that can be immediately retrieved by the called party, and that provides an indication to the calling party that the message has been retrieved.